Case Number 06865

THE A-TEAM: SEASON TWO

The Charge

In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for
a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum-security
stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government,
they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can
help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team.

Opening Statement

Stephen J. Cannell's ambitious action adventure TV series The A-Team
wasn't the prettiest or the most technically accomplished primetime series, but
did it really matter? Audiences that tuned into the show expected to see
spectacular explosions, and The A-Team delivered, week after week, for
five seasons. Not only did each hour-long episode pack enough mayhem, gunplay,
and vehicular destruction to provide for a decent Chuck Norris revenge film, but
they even had one thing that Norris and his contemporaries couldn't compete with
-- action stars with more than two facial expressions. Twenty years after it
first debuted, the series has achieved cult status and continues to gain new
fans through syndicated reruns.

Facts of the Case

Anytime a shopkeeper is bullied by small-time gangster or innocent people are
being held by a malicious terrorist group, the A-Team and their badass black van
arrive on scene to right wrongs and protect the weak. While avoiding capture by
Colonel Decker (Lance LeGault, Welcome to Spring Break),
"Hannibal" Smith (George Peppard, Breakfast at Tiffany's),
"Howlin' Mad" Murdock (Dwight Schultz, Star Trek: The Next
Generation), B.A. Baracus (Mr. T, Rocky III), and Templeton
"Faceman" Peck (Dirk Benedict, Battlestar Galactica) build
makeshift combat vehicles out of scrap iron and rusty parts and lead militarized
strikes against their targets. Although soldiers of fortune, the A-Team often
waive or reduce their fees so that their services are within reach for those
that needed them most.

Hot on the heels of The A-Team: The Complete First Season, Universal
has released the second season of The A-Team on DVD, with 22 episodes on
three double-sided discs:

* Diamonds 'n' Dust The A-Team travels to Zimbabwe, where they must
transport a load of volatile explosives to a diamond mine. 8/10

* Recipe for Heavy Bread By chance, Hannibal and Face run into the
cook from their POW camp days, who is being pursued by heroin dealers that
operate out of a bakery. 9/10

* The Only Church in Town Face hires the A-Team to travel to Ecuador
to help an old girlfriend who is being held captive in a nunnery. 7/10

* Bad Time on the Border Hannibal goes undercover to bust an illegal
operation ferrying immigrants across the border. But when the others lose him,
is Hannibal in trouble? 7/10

* When You Comin' Back, Range Rider? In this two-part episode, the
Military Police are hot on the A-Team's trail while they try to save wild horses
from being dragged away by evil rustlers. 8/10

* The Taxicab Wars A small cab company is being strong-armed out of
business by a more powerful rival, and they hire Hannibal and the guys to even
the odds. 10/10

* Labor Pains The A-Team help a group of migrant cabbage harvesters
start a union and stop being exploited. 8/10

* There's Always a Catch Decker captures the A-Team while they are
trying to help the residents of a fishing village who are being attacked.
9/10

* Water, Water Everywhere Three disabled Vietnam vets hire Hannibal
and the guys when a land developer tries to forcibly remove them by cutting off
their water. 8/10

* Steel A classic. The A-Team comes up against a mob when they
investigate claims of industrial sabotage at a construction site. 10/10

* The White Ballot Face runs for sheriff of a small town to oust the
corrupt rival, attracting the attention of Col. Decker. 9/10

* The Maltese Cow The A-Team face off against a Chinese tong when they
try to help some friends who own a Chinese restaurant. 9/10

* In Plane Sight The A-Team fly into South America to rescue a pilot
falsely accused of smuggling cocaine. 7/10

* The Battle of Bel-Air Decker plans to ambush the A-Team as they
rescue a newspaper reporter from a corrupt security firm. 8/10

* Say It with Bullets The A-Team infiltrates a military base to
investigate the murder of an innocent man killed by gun smugglers. 7/10

* Pure-Dee Poison Heading to the Deep South, The A-Team helps a
preacher drop the hammer on some good ol' boys who are distributing dangerous
moonshine. 8/10

* It's a Desert Out There Are a gang of petty thieves just preparing
for a big score? Hannibal thinks so. 9/10

* Chopping Spree The A-Team baits a ring of car choppers with B.A.'s
van, which causes him considerable distress. 9/10

* Harder than it Looks The A-Team is hired to return a girl kidnapped
by a terrorist group, but the victim isn't quite as innocent as she looks.
6/10

* Deadly Maneuvers What happens to all those evil land barons,
smugglers, and extortionists after the A-Team get through with them? Well, they
all band together and hire mercenaries to get their revenge! 10/10

* Semi-Friendly Persuasion The A-Team must defend a religious group
from the brutality of several local villagers, but only under the condition that
they do so without violence. 8/10

* Curtain Call In this unintentionally humorous flashback episode, The
A-Team hides out in a cave after Murdock is injured, and reminisce about all the
great times they've had beating the holy hell out of bad guys. 6/10

The Evidence

The A-Team came out of the gates in its first season with guns
blazing, and was an instant success. Offering a perfect blend of fun and carnage
that would be disturbing if it wasn't so entertaining, the show may have been
formulaic, but it was consistently entertaining in a "comfort TV" kind
of way. However, between the explosions, choreographed fistfights, and tough guy
talk, The A-Team was really a character-based show that truly prospered
through the dynamic personalities of its heroes. Whether it was B.A. pitying
fools, Murdock disguising himself as superhero "Captain Cab," or
Hannibal chiding Face for trying to duck out with that week's female co-star,
much of the fun came from the obvious comic chemistry of the four distinct
personalities that made up the A-Team:

* Col. John "Hannibal" Smith -- The cigar-sucking leader of the
group, Hannibal always had a plan and relished the moment when it possibly might
come together. Strangely, foes and potential clients never saw through some of
the least convincing disguises of all time that Hannibal employed to keep
outsiders at a comfortable distance.

* Lt. Templeton "Faceman" Peck -- The consummate pretty-boy
conman, Face could always be counted on to track down any piece of equipment
that the guys needed in a tight spot. No matter where they were, he used his
wits to scam anyone out of, or into, anything -- especially if an attractive
woman was involved.

* Capt. Hector M. "Howling Mad" Murdock -- Murdock was an
officially unacknowledged member of the A-Team. An ace pilot that provided his
unit with valuable air support, Murdock flew everything from helicopters to
commercial airliners and confused villains with his (possibly) insane
antics.

Not ones to tamper with a sure thing, show creators Stephen J. Cannell and
Frank Lupo didn't make many changes to the second season of the show besides a
little fine tuning in the supporting cast. The first thing you'll notice with
The A-Team: The Complete Second Season is that the character of the
A-Team's tireless pursuer Colonel Lynch, played by William Luckling, has been
replaced by Colonel Decker (Lance LeGault), who is introduced in the two-parter
"When You Comin' Back, Range Rider?" Although the shows with the MPs
chasing the guys are traditionally not very memorable, Decker is more of a
hard-ass than Lynch, and proves a welcome addition. Additionally, the unofficial
fifth member of the squad, newspaper reporter "Triple A" Amy Allen
(Melinda Culea) disappears about halfway through season, supposedly on a foreign
correspondent assignment. Four or five episodes later, in "The Battle of
Bel-Air," Amy's friend and fellow journalist Tawnia Baker (Marla Heasley,
The Marrying Man) replaces her, a position she would hold for the rest of
the season.

The only significant observable change in Season Two of The A-Team is
the show's impact on popular culture, mostly centered around Laurence Tureaud --
the muscle-bound Mr. T. That year saw the debut of Mr. T, a cartoon that
starred Tureaud as the coach of a team of globetrotting, crime-solving teenage
gymnasts, which made him a Saturday morning hero and drove a younger audience to
the more adult A-Team program. Accordingly, the show's growing influence
helped to significantly temper B.A. Baracus's "Bad Attitude," as he
made the change over from beefy grouch to a gentle giant. Riding his popularity,
Mr. T quickly assumed the position of role model, helping young children on the
show believe in themselves, while making offhanded references to his community
center youth group back home. Outside of the A-Team, Mr. T starred in his
own 1984 youth motivational video called Be Somebody or Be Somebody's
Fool! and released an album on Columbia records called "Mr. T's
Commandments," which featured the chart-topping hits "No Dope No
Drugs" and my personal favorite, "Mr. T, Mr. T (He Was Made For
Love)," sung to the tune of The Bobbettes' doo-wop classic "Mr.
Lee." This change in character shot Mr. T into the pop culture stratosphere
in the show's second season, and he really became his own brand, immortalized
forever on candy wrappers, cereal boxes, and jigsaw puzzles. Galoob also started
to issue A-Team toys this year, so kids could play with their own Mr. T action
figure, as well as Hannibal, Face, Murdock, and some laughably generic villains
with names like "Snake."

On the actual show, however, the villains were far from generic, and this
season continued to pour it on thick with a wide range of b-movie guest stars,
albeit with names not quite as notable as the first season. Eagle-eyed viewers
will spot drive-in mainstays Michael Ironside (Scanners), Lance Henriksen
(Aliens), John Vernon (Point Blank), Dennis Franz (Psycho
II), and Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead), all taking their turns to line
up and get their jaws punched by George Peppard's stunt double.

Strangely enough, The A-Team's increased pre-pubescent following this
season continued to fuel concerns over the violent nature of the program, but as
this DVD set bears out, few people ever really got hurt. The show more often
resembles an animated episode of G.I. Joe, where every gun blast was a
warning shot, and every car crash results in only minor skin abrasions. Serious
injuries only happened off-screen, and The A-Team often got around
violence watchdogs simply by humiliating the crooks with non-lethal ammunition,
such as food or paint -- ironically, common household items easily available to
kids seeking to emulate the show's antics.

So how does Universal's release of The A-Team: The Complete Second
Season stack up? Just about average, unfortunately. The included episodes
look sharper than those currently making the rounds in syndication, but not by a
whole lot. Those expecting bright, fiery explosions rendered in all their
digital glory will be disappointed to see that colors remain fairly dull. Minor
source artifacts continue to be a problem throughout the entire set, with
occasional edge enhancement issues. The mono 2.0 soundtrack is pretty typical
for a TV show from the 1980s, cramped and slightly muffled. Music and dialogue
come through adequately, but more dynamic sound effects, like gunfire, are
rather flat. Fans of the show will also be disappointed to discover that there
is only one extra included in this set, an episode of Knight Rider
entitled "Brother's Keeper" that I didn't really enjoy. It's also
worth noting that Universal has wisely done away with the digipak they used for
the first season and replaced it with three slim cases in a sleeve. A welcome
change, but it looks out of place when filed beside the first season set on your
shelf.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

Of course, the weekly budget for a TV action show can't compete with even a
low budget b-film, and as a result, The A-Team continued to be easily one
of the most unconvincingly crafted shows ever made this season, with poorly
matched stock footage and laughable stunt doubles. Almost every show features
shoddy second unit work in which suspicious close-ups of hands building
improvised weapons are obviously not attached to the actors they are supposed to
represent. But clearly, the producers of the show never imagined that The
A-Team would be available on home video, where freeze-frame scrutiny leads
to the discovery of all kinds of previously unnoticed gaffes, including
ill-executed effects, embarrassing stage fights, and a host of visible stunt
drivers piloting all the vehicles.

Closing Statement

The strange thing is, no matter how cheap or silly The A-Team looks,
it never hinders my enjoyment of the show -- in fact, it seems like a small
price to pay for the weekly anarchy of flipping jeeps, farm threshers converted
into cabbage-shooting weapons, and helicopter explosions. Although there are
better and more memorable TV shows about avenging anti-heroes, it is still
empowering to watch Hannibal defy authority and triumph over bullies according
to his own ethical beliefs. The A-Team may not rank much above a guilty
pleasure for most, but it was the next best thing to catching a
straight-to-video action film serialized every week on your TV, and it's really
a shame that Universal couldn't have put a little more effort into this set
beyond one cross-promoting episode of Knight Rider.

The Verdict

I love it when a DVD set comes together, but Universal's reluctance to add
useful extras to The A-Team: The Complete Second Season is a continuing
disappointment for those that are following this series. The A-Team is hereby
ordered to help organize infuriated fans into a tactical strike force, and
modify an old broken-down tractor into a rapid-fire DVD catapult to launch discs
at Universal until they stop their jibber-jabber and add some extras!